1. 5527 POINTS
    Marlin McKelvy
    President, Consumer Directed Benefit Solutions, Memphis, Tennessee
    A private health insurance exchange is a private sector counterpart to the Federal Government run or state run health insurance exchanges created as a centerpiece of ObamaCare.  A private health insurance exchange or marketplace as is now the preferred term, is generally going to be an employer based program that offers multiple health insurance plan options to its employees.  There are variations on the private health insurance marketplace theme.  Some are built around the offering of individual health insurance plans from one or a number of different health insurance carriers.  Others are built around one group insurance carrier that offers a variety of different plan designs at varying price points for employees to choose from.  Still some others are large enough that more than one group health insurance carrier is electing to participate and offer a selection of health insurance plans, so in this last example you could have plans from Humana, United Healthcare and CIGNA all being offered alongside each other thus giving employees an even broader selection of plan designs and perhaps provider networks to choose from.

    In some cases there can be integration between a private exchanges and the government based exchanges.  This is most commonly found in private exchanges built around offering individual health insurance plans.  This can then allow for employees who would qualify for subsidies through the government health insurance exchanges to enroll in those plans while employees who do not qualify for subsidies can enroll in health insurance plans offered outside of the government exchanges.

    Another advantage that private exchanges can have over their government based counterparts is that they can offer a wide array of other employee or individual insurance options such as dental, vision, life, disability, critical illness, cancer and accident insurance.  Some private exchanges can even extend the one stop shopping concept to auto, homeowners and other property & casualty based insurance products. The government health marketplaces are currently limited to health insurance and some dental insurance options.

    If you are interested in learning about whether a private health insurance exchange might be the right solution for your employee benefit needs please feel free to contact me.
    Answered on May 16, 2014
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